“Holy fuck. Incoming,” I said. I saw the flare of the missile in my periphery just as it appeared on radar. “Evasive maneuvers.”
“Christ. What the–”
“Two incoming.” Taft’s voice cut off Kennedy’s. Taft was thinking with his head and not his dick.
After a few recent bouts of angry, wild sex with Kennedy, he’d gone commando on my ass. Well, and one other reason.
I banked right. Hard. The ground, which was thickly forested rolling hills, got bigger.
“Who the hell is shooting at me and why?”
The first missile passed, and I banked again to avoid the second.
“What the fuck is going on?” Kennedy shouted.
“Some helo is firing at Quincy,” Taft countered.
I could hear chatter in the background, them bickering, and–
My thoughts ceased, and I focused solely on my training, on getting my ass out of this situation. I’d been shot at before, with soldiers who relied on me to get them home in one piece. No one was in the chopper now, but I still had precious cargo. Cargo I couldn’t allow to be harmed.
I heard Taft’s voice in my ear. Kennedy’s, too. I ignored them and just flew.
The second missile hit my left landing skid, the slight impact jarring the copter off course.
“I’ve been hit.” I checked the gauges, then pressed the button to shut off the alarm as I veered along the ridge of the hillside. I relayed the damage. Damage Ford wasn’t going to be happy about, not to his brand new helicopter. “Not sure about landing, but I’ve had worse.”
“Fucking-A, Quincy!”
“Shut it, Kennedy,” I snapped. “Get your ass off the fucking comms.”
“You’re my woman, and–”
“I’m not your woman,” I countered. “Taft, shut him down. I’m returning to base. I don’t need–”
The alarms blared again.
“Incoming. Someone sure as shit doesn’t like your ass,” Taft said.
This time, it wasn’t missiles, but another chopper. Of course the missiles came from a chopper. Where else would they be coming from around here?
I whipped my head to the left where the radar indicated another bird.
“Fuck.”
I dipped over the ridgeline to be sheltered by the rugged hillside, but the chopper followed.
“It’s a Bell. Friendly.” The whiz of bullets–and the missiles–had me changing my mind and direction. “Shit, not friendly.”
I used every bit of my knowledge to evade the chopper, but I couldn’t outfly it. More bullets came at me in a long barrage.
“Quincy! Get the fuck out of there!” Kennedy shouted. He was still listening in. So probably were all the others back at the command center. This was me on a simple run, shuttling the Search and Rescue guys. Nothing more. Now it was like I was back in the Middle East.
I was fucked. I was a few miles from Alpha Mountain and my helipad. There was no way I could avoid this guy for that long or even long enough for him to run out of bullets.
“They want to shoot me down.” Duh.
“Get back to base!” Taft called.